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In the 1950s, a developer named Claude Shannon developed a new found concept of "mouse" racing through various circuits, wires, and magnets. The mouse would scan through the entire maze until reaching the end and travelled at a very slow rate. This idea create the world of micro mouse racing -
After Theseus, the main micromouse was created that we all know today. One big change is that unlike Theseus, instead of using Reed wires and magnets, the micromice have storage(brain) and programmers have the ability to direct them using code. -
After the concept of micromouse computing was introduces, the first micro mouse competition was held in 1977 on a 10x10 maze with regular sized micromouse running through a 1.8m pathway. -
Originally, the micromouse was very large including many sensors to move along edges in order to eventually make it to the end. The turns were sharp 90º meaning the race times were very slow. In the end, the winning mouse used a simple "dumb wall follow" algorithm which worked at the time because the finishing goal and the entire maze was connected by the edge. -
After the first successful competition of micromouses, there was a slight adjustment in the maze formation where wall weren't all connected to the side wall edges and the final goal was centered in the middle of the maze. This eliminated the possibility of the "wall follow" algorithm. -
With the new off wall mazes came more creative route strategies. Newer more precise and accurate algorithms were made such as the breadth-first search meaning that run times improve from 4 minutes to 1-2 minutes. -
After the first few micromouse competitions, competitors started coming up with new creative ways to be more efficient. Some of these methods included, a vent/fan to stay balanced during quick turns and different turning angles in order to have smoother turns -
In rage of all of micromouses success came an idea of a new event, the half size micromouse race, with the cells condensing to a 32x32 grid. This meaning smaller room for error because each row is now smaller. -
After all of the alterations applied the even faster speeds were met down to under 5 seconds. The current record holder is Ng Beng Kiat with a speed of 3.921 seconds. -
